MACAU-Stanley Ho’s wealth is the stuff of legend in Asia.As daughter of Macau’s sultan of slots, odds were Daisy Ho would get into the gambling game. But now she’s raising the stakes. By Tony Wong
Jun 03, 2007 04:30 AM, Toronto Star, Tony Wong
HONG KONG-Daisy Ho gambled once. She was in her teens and on a Mediterranean cruise with her father, casino billionaire Stanley Ho.
“I asked him for 20 bucks because I wanted to go to the ship’s casino,” said Ho. “He said he would give me the $20, but he guaranteed I would be back. He said, `I know this, because the house always wins. And I am the house’.”
Feeling “absolutely sick” about losing the money, “I’ve never really been interested in gambling since.”
But the U of T-educated Ho, 42, is now playing with far bigger stakes. Daisy and her sister Pansy have partnered with the world’s second-largest casino operator, MGM Mirage, to build an MGM Grand hotel in Macau in a 50-50 deal valued at $1.1 billion (U.S.). And more projects are in the works.
“It’s an exciting time because Macau is going through so many changes,” said Ho in a rare interview in the pristine boardroom of her 39th-floor penthouse office overlooking Hong Kong harbour.
While Ho, one of Asia’s richest and most powerful women, is frequently in the celebrity magazines in Hong Kong, most Canadians wouldn’t know that a compatriot is making a major splash in the former Portuguese colony of Macau.
In a wide-ranging and frank conversation, Ho talked about her investment in Asia’s gambling mecca and her relationship with her famous father and siblings.
The MGM deal is a separate investment, the cherry on a very expansive topping that is distinct from the role she holds as the deputy managing director and chief financial officer of her father’s public firm, Shun Tak Enterprises, with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion. Ho has helped transform the company from a hydrofoil operator that shuttled Hong Kong gamblers to Macau and back, to a major property and retail developer, and casino and hotel owner.
Ho has also taken stakes in joint ventures such as a new Mandarin Oriental hotel and a Westin Macau, in addition to building the most expensive condos the city has seen.
The MGM Grand will be one of the priciest hotels in the world when it is finally built later this year with its 600 rooms and 345 game tables. When it’s done, Ho and her sister plan to embark on a second casino, the MGM Grand Paradise.
“If you had asked me what I would be doing 20 years ago, I never imagined going to this extent, or on this grand a scheme. In fact, I wouldn’t have imagined working for my father,” said Ho.
With 50 per cent of the firm’s revenues coming from Macau, Ho sees that number increasing in the future, especially from China. Excluding Hong Kong, there are now 21 Forbes-listed Chinese billionaires, double the number only two years ago. In the VIP rooms of Macau casinos, it is not unusual to see clients betting $100,000 a shot.
For 2006, Shun Tak recorded almost $94 million in profit, up 82 per cent from the prior year. The company’s ferry service had a 13 per cent uptick in traffic to Macau, with new casinos part of the appeal. Ho expects a similar increase this year.
But while things look bullish now, Ho says the firm faced rocky times during the Asian economic meltdown of 1997 and the SARS crisis. “The company was dealing with high debt at the time, and the property market slowed down - it was a rough ride. But we managed somehow to sail through it.”
Now investor confidence couldn’t be higher: A $700 million syndicated loan last year for one of her projects was 20 times oversubscribed with more than 20 major financial institutions participating.
Caught in the whirlwind, Ho doesn’t have much downtime. The last time she visited Toronto was in 2005. Her mother, Lucina, has since moved back to Hong Kong, visiting their Toronto property - the only one in the Bridle Path with a 24-hour guard - once a year.
Still, there are marked differences in style. While her father has two full-time bodyguards when he travels, Ho prefers to be without. And while dad is known to travel in one of his Rolls Royces, Ho opts to hop on the Hong Kong Metro.
“It’s way faster,” she says.
She is also a busy mother, insisting on dropping off her two girls, Beatrice, 12, and Gillian, 9, to school every morning before going to work. In fact, her children phoned several times during the interview.
“My younger one once asked: Did you get this job on your own, or did grandfather give you the job?” laughs Ho after getting off the phone with Gillian. “I told her I actually had to work very hard.”
Determined to break away from her father’s shadow after graduating with an MBA from University of Toronto, Ho worked for several banks in Hong Kong.
Daisy, sister Pansy, and brother Lawrence, all with Canadian connections, are the highest profile of the children. Younger sister Josie is a singer and actress in Hong Kong.
Does her father have a succession plan, Ho shakes her head. “Nobody would discuss that with dad, because for one thing he’s still going so strong. He still is very hands-on in business, although he’s given us a free hand in the day-to-day operations of the company.”
Despite her family’s high profile, Ho remains behind the scenes. “Not that I’m anti-social, but I really sometimes get tongue-tied with strangers, making small talk,” says Ho, in her disarmingly honest way. “I’m not good at the socializing thing.”
The former president of the U of T Hong Kong Alumni Association, Ho is also the chair of a scholarship fund that sends academically gifted Hong Kong students on a scholarship to U of T. Her executive assistant, Karen Kwok, and another long-time assistant also went to school in Canada.
“I’m forever grateful to Canada,” says Ho. “The two years at U of T doing my MBA were really the toughest I’ve gone through. I’ve never worked as hard and it challenged me to my limit, but it helped to develop my strength of character, my perseverance.
“Sometimes I think - where did I get that? I think it was Canada, it brought it all out.”
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007
